KEY ELEMENTS PERTAINING TO BAUDRILLARD'S ANALYSIS OF POSTMODERN CULTURE AND SOCIETY

Abstract

Jean Baudrillard's postmodern metaphysics proposes a completely new system in its dialectical approach regarding the analysis of postmodern culture and society. Living in the age of speed, the author of famous postmodern philosophy like "America", "Simulacra and Simulation", "The System of Objects" or "The Agony of Power" explains the shortcomings of the secularized postmodern world and finds a comprehensive way of explaining the loss of meaning in the world where contemporary media, financial drive, multinational capitalism and super urbanization contribute to a high extent to the creation of an artificial hyper reality in which the real and the unreal are merged into one. His analysis provides an account for the cultural void, which can be perceived in today's highly computerized and technological systems. He then introduces the concept of simulation of reality to relate it to the human experience, by explaining the fact that, in the postmodern society, symbols and signs have replaced all reality and meaning. Language plays a more important role in delimiting power relations within society and the sign language replaces the real meaning.

Headnote

Abstract: Jean Baudrillard's postmodern metaphysics proposes a completely new system in its dialectical approach regarding the analysis of postmodern culture and society. Living in the age of speed, the author of famous postmodern philosophy like "America", "Simulacra and Simulation", "The System of Objects" or "The Agony of Power" explains the shortcomings of the secularized postmodern world and finds a comprehensive way of explaining the loss of meaning in the world where contemporary media, financial drive, multinational capitalism and super urbanization contribute to a high extent to the creation of an artificial hyper reality in which the real and the unreal are merged into one. His analysis provides an account for the cultural void, which can be perceived in today's highly computerized and technological systems. He then introduces the concept of simulation of reality to relate it to the human experience, by explaining the fact that, in the postmodern society, symbols and signs have replaced all reality and meaning. Language plays a more important role in delimiting power relations within society and the sign language replaces the real meaning.

Key words: postmodernism, simulations, triumph of object, hyper reality, utopia

Baudrillard's immense contribution to metaphysical imaginary is precisely the result of his vision, according to which exterior forces control human life and the individual cannot control it; thus, the objects of natural and physical sciences cannot be controlled or influenced by the subject. As a result, the subject is defeated. The objects prove their superiority to the subject by relating them to the uncontrolled growth and replication in all fields. Baudrillard distances himself from all subject-centered metaphysics and proclaims the superiority of the object in his analysis of contemporary culture and life.

Baudrillard's discourse on hyper reality and its influence on postmodern culture and society have started very early, in the 1960's during a period of time when French academics were influenced by the radical ideas such as revolts and a deconstruction of present values. Baudrillard's philosophic view is the result of three major stages reflected in his books.

The latest stage in the building of his philosophic system is reflected by the appearance of his book "The Singular Objects of Architecture (2000)" which represents the mature reflection in the construction of his philosophical view on postmodernity and culture. His project is embodied in a definition of architecture by means of which he clearly defines his understanding of postmodernism. The book takes the form of a dialogue between Jean Baudrillard and Jean Nouvel and is the result of the initiative initiated by the Writers House and the Paris School of Architecture La Villette. Baudrillard's discourse is opened by the writer's question on whether or not the architecture reflected by the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center is the expression of a society, which belongs to a hyper real time. Baudrillard sees in them the anticipation of present times. To him, the Towers seem to be cloned and they appear to take the form of two perforated bands. They would anticipate the end of modernism and the beginning of a new epoch, namely postmodernity. Baudrillard continues the exposure of his view by introducing different towns, museums and architectural structures which, in his view, have elements of postmodern architecture and then for each one of them adds a concept that defines postmodernity; the examples given justify the beginning of a new trend in architecture, philosophy, and culture, thus having a big impact on society.

New York City is the next stop in Baudrillard's discussion which is used to add a new element to the postmodern view, i.e. utopia. Seen as the center of the end of the world, of an apocalypse, New York represents a utopia that has become reality. New York represents a world that has become reality, that has a body on its own and which cannot be destroyed. The paradox of reality is represented by New York in its whole representation: "New York provides the kind of stupefaction characterized by a world that is already accomplished, an absolutely apocalyptic world but one that is replete in its verticality- and in this sense, ultimately it engenders a form of deception because it is embodied, because it's already there, and we can no longer destroy it." (Baudrillard 2002:14). New York is seen as the city which is indestructible, that has overcome his own destruction, which embodies a deconstruction of space that imposes no limits on heights of the buildings; it is in other words a representation of indefinite determination, of infinity. The next analysis focuses on the metamorphosis of architecture. The shift from the architectural style of the 20th century can be seen in the explosive number of urban establishments. No longer do cities rely on recipes of urban art. A new planning has arisen leading to preconceived cities that no longer need any rules of planning, but rely on models that can be copied or cloned and no longer need the intervention of architecture. Then a comparison is introduced between architecture and philosophy, and the problems they are confronted with. That being said, architecture is being confronted with dimensions with are immeasurable, metaphysical. Because of the impossibility to cope with the infinity, architecture finds itself overwhelmed trying to find solutions to its problems: "Architecture finds itself faced with incommensurable, metaphysical dimensions. A priori it can't do anything about that. It's in the same situation as philosophy or science: it's now an adult. We need to develop other strategies." (Baudrillard 2002:18)

In the next subchapter, dedicated to the esthetics of modernity, Jean Baudrillard insists on the fact that the age of modernity has reached an end, starting with the moment when everything targeted had as an ultimate goal the idea of progress. Modern art and culture have reached the end when singularity has replaced the concept of multitude. The work of art was an expression of singularity and the disappearance of singularity has led to a cultural void, which needed a new interpretation. "Baudrillard's narrative concerns the end of modernity dominated by production and industrial capitalism and the advent of a new postmodern era constituted by simulations and new forms of technology, culture, society, and experience. Whereas modernity was distinguished by expansion, differentiation, energy, and movement, as well as by theoretical and artistic projects, which sought to represent and interpret the real, postmodernity is distinguished by implosion, dedifferentiation, reproduction of models of the hyper real and inertia. This new social order is distinguished by the disappearance of all the big signs of modernity - production, meaning, reality, power, the social and so forth - and the appearance of a new type of social order and modes of experience"(Kellner 1989:117).

The idea of the multitudes has replaced the concept of singularity; the idea of the hyper reality has emerged as a way out to the impossibility of coping with the void of culture. Thus architecture has taken a new form of the monster, when objects are simply thrown into towns. Culture has undergone a metamorphosis, has become something else that of course gains value in the realm of the hyper real. In a new subchapter, the concept of the esthetics of disappearance is used to explain the end of modernity. Baudrillard insists that the concept of nihilism, which has replaced abstraction, and the destruction of the sensible, does not mean a disappearance as such, but that there is more to it. It has to do with metamorphosis; a form melts into another, a representation of appearance- disappearance. The art of disappearance is proclaimed as a new particularity of postmodern lifestyle: "The disappearance I'm talking about, which results in the concept of worthlessness or nothingness I mentioned earlier, means that one form disappears into another. It's a kind of metamorphosis: appearance- disappearance. The mechanism is completely different. It's not the same as disappearing within a network, where everyone becomes the clone or metastasis of something else; it's a chain of interlinked forms, into which we disappear, where everything implies its own disappearance."(Baudrillard 2002:28). Baudrillard's negativist view on modernity is explained by means of the consequences modernity had on the society. The subjectivity of the group and the subjectivity of the individual led to the 'death' of the subject. Baudrillard admits that in the world of duplicates and multitudes we no longer rule the world. The subject has lost its control over the world. He gives as example sciences that admit to no longer ruling over the real. Thus, the modernity has reached the end and a new era is opened to postmodernity. The subject is lost in search for the subject and the modern era is gone when everything searched for becomes ambiguous: "But once everything we are searching for becomes ambiguous, ambivalent, reversible, random, then modernity is overand it's just as true for politics." (Baudrillard 2002:39).

In the subchapter "A shelter for culture?" Baudrillard poses the question of whether or not architecture still has a relationship with culture and society. In search for an answer, Baudrillard appeals to the city of Marseille and the remodeling of an industrial building redesigned and given a new utility purpose. Baudrillard thinks that the successive recreation-regeneration process has a value that no one would have thought it would have gained. Baudrillard admits that by exiting dimensional norms, and entering the unprogrammed, unpredictable, the radicalization is made possible. The reconversion of space and big urban spaces built without initial projects like Soho district of New York have been conquered by privileged people in the last decades. This has led to the replacement of the poor by the rich. Previously, cities were the expression of singularity, whereas today they change at high speed, with confusion. Baudrillard insists on the fact that today's cities don't become, they change. Becoming would have been better as it expresses a true architecture. Changing has negative connotations as it offers an excuse for the disappearance of architectural motives.

The city of tomorrow, presented in one of the subchapters, becomes an extension of networks, a virtual world, the infinity of images replace reality, the city becomes the expression of its infinite possibilities: " [...] the city is no longer a form in the process of becoming; it's an extended network. That's fine, you can define it as you have, but that urban life is no longer the life of the city but its infinite possibility: a virtual urban life, like playing on the keyboard of the city as if it were a kind of screen. I saw it as the end of architecture...by pushing the concept to its limit and primarily by using the photograph as a point of departure. This is reflected in the idea that the great majority of images are no longer the expression of a subject, or the reality of an object, but almost exclusively the technical fulfillment of all its intrinsic possibilities. It's the photographic medium that does all the work. People think they're photographing a scene, but they are only technical operators of the device's infinite virtuality."(Baudrillard 2002:48).

According to Baudrillard, we witness a cloning of architectural models; he gives as example a building of offices, which all follow the same model and can be copied disregarding the conception. Thus, in the postmodern world stress is laid on the infinite multiplication of limited models. The question asked by Baudrillard is whether anyone would benefit from this.

Globalization, universality and neutrality represent the biggest danger to culture and to the human being. The absence of quality, conformity with rules and the given would lead to the neutralization of the subject. The subject is defeated, the singularity and ingenuity are replace by neutrality. In Baudrillard's opinion this is our free choice. The effect on society would be devastating. The society will become dissociated and would lack any conflict. This would lead to two parts of society disconnected from each other. On the one side there will be the privileged, informative society, at the other end the excluded ones. Baudrilllard uses the term 'mondialization' to define a globalization that represents a completeness of neutralization and which has as opposite singularity. 'Mondialization' would have no conflicts between antagonistic forces. The result of this movement will produce a virtual hyper society that will grab all facilities, powers, being an absolute minority, becoming more of a minority each day while the rest of the population will lead a life of exclusion. Thus cities will be exposed to two kinds of realities: the space which being the space of the real will be visible, while the virtual space being an abstract will not be seen. Only the privileged ones will have access to it. There will not be a dominant class ruling; there will be the artificial intelligence giving course to "full speculation". A comparison is drawn from it when describing Europe. Euro represents a virtual object coming from a hierarchy. All laws will be made by the few, and will have no connection with public opinion. Everything will function in parallel worlds... According to Baudrillard, the concept of freedom promoted so much by modernism has become a struggle in today's world. The human being is free because it has all the technical means to become free. But this kind of freedom ends in liberalism. Today the human being does not fight anything. The problem of freedom is not being posed, only that of operability.

The second phase in Baudrillard's metaphysical approach is completely detailed by the 1981 philosophical treatise "Simulacra and Simulation" which presents into the greatest details the analysis of postmodern society, the hyper real and the understanding of new concepts like 'simulacra', 'nihilism', the 'apocalypse', the 'hyper market' and 'hyper commodity', territory and metamorphoses, the 'clone story'.

The treatise begins with the definition of the simulacrum which is: "never what hides the truth- it is truth that hides the fact that there is none. The simulacrum is true."(Baudrillard 1994: 10). Baudrillard sees the beginning of a new era affecting abstraction that doesn't reflect anymore the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation is regarded as a generation of models of the real that do not belong to the reality but to the hyper reality. Borges's fable in which cartographers of the Empire drew a very detailed map covering the territory exactly, and which is an example of an allegory of simulation is used by Baudrillard to set it in antithesis with the real dangers posed by the generation of models that clone everything, distancing society from reality. The features of the simulation include: genetic modification, cloning, and nuclear operation. In such an instance, the real is formed by models of control in which the human being has no say. This also lacks rationality, because it no longer measures itself against anything that is rational or real. Baudrillard puts it in a very clear way: "the era of simulation is inaugurated by a liquidation of all referential - worse: with their artificial resurrection in the systems of signs, a material more malleable than meaning, in that it lends itself to all systems of equivalences to all binary oppositions, to all combinatory algebra."(Baudrillard 1994: 20).

The hyper real can be distinguished by its capacity of being incapable to create the difference between the model or copy of the real and reality itself. It lacks origins and it is driven away from the imaginary. "The distinctions between object and representation, thing and idea are no longer valid. In their place Baudrillard fathoms a strange new world constructed out of models or simulacra, which have no referent or ground in any reality, except their own. Simulations are different from fictions or lies in that the former not only present an absence as a presence, the imaginary as the real. They also undermine any contrast to the real, absorbing the real within itself" (Poster 2001:6). Then Baudrillard insists on the difference between dissimulation and simulation. In his view the dissimulation accounts for pretending not to have something that you have, in contrast to simulation, which is pretending to have something you don't have. While dissimulation implies a presence, simulation as seen by Baudrillard implies an absence. He continues the definition of simulation by opposing it to representation and highlighting the fact that simulation appears from utopia, from the disregard to the sign and the representation of the real, i.e. the hyper real distances itself from reality and its representation brings us to the realm of utopia: "Such is simulation, insofar as it is opposed to representation. Representation stems from the principle of the equivalence of the sign and the real (even if this equivalence is Utopian, it is a fundamental axiom). Simulation, on the contrary, stems from the Utopia of the principle of equivalence, from the radical negation of the sign as value, from the sign as the reversion and death sentence of every reference."(Baudrillard 1994: 6).

The major change lies in the fact that signs take a new role in the hyper real world: instead of having signs that dissimulate something, we shift to signs that dissimulate that there is anything. This change determines a new beginning: the beginning of the era of simulacra and simulation, in which "there is no longer a God to recognize his own, no longer a Last Judgment to separate the false from the true, the real from its artificial resurrection, as everything is already dead and resurrected in advance."(Baudrillard 1994:15) One of the examples chosen by Baudrillard to reflect the concept of the simulacra is Disneyland. Disneyland is created according to Baudrillard so as to stimulate the fiction of the real; its imaginary is neither true nor false, but serves only as a space meant to regenerate the imaginary, it is compared with a waste treatment plant that according to the writer exist everywhere; Disneyland is the place where dreams, phantasms, the historical, the fairylike is recycled, and can be considered on a mental level the product of the hyper real society. Because the real cannot be rediscovered at absolute level in the hyper real, the illusion is also impossible to create. Cultural values are annihilated in advance because of the simulacrum. In order to prove his point, Baudrillard uses the Beaubourg Museum; this is seen as a perfect illustration of neutralization of signifier and signified, an example of the network system reflected in hyper reality. Beaubourg goes a step further comparing Beaubourg concept with that of the hypermarket. : "Thus for the first time, Beaubourg is at the level of culture what the hypermarket is at the level of commodity: the perfect circulatory operator, the demonstration of anything (commodity, culture, crowd, compressed air) through its own accelerated circulation."(Kellner 1989: 98). Baudrillard draws a comparison between Beaubourg and the institutions, the state, the power. The nihilistic views are sustained by referring constantly to the implosion of everything sending it all into a mode of disappearance. "Baudrillard uses his analysis of Beaubourg to illustrate in particular his theories of implosion and deterrence. Beaubourg allegedly absorbs and neutralizes all cultural energies, which implode in a deterrence system that mirrors the political and social systems; thus it illustrates in a microcosm the fundamental processes at work in the larger society. [...] Beaubourg thus really contributes to the death of meaning, to the demise of high culture, and can therefore be seen as a monument of cultural deterrence." (Kellner 1989: 98) Once the hyper real is presented, Baudrillard finds it necessary to explain the defeat of the subject. The subject is lost in its relationship with the object. The subject cannot comprehend the reality of the hyper real object. The objects constitute no longer signs that can be deciphered. An example of hyper real object is the hypermarket. This object is linked to the parking lot, the computers terminal to the city. The hypermarket does not exist outside the present setting and it represents a giant 'montage factory'. Baudrillard perceives the hypermarket as a model of controlled socialization. But because the model is controlled it signals the end of modernity, the overthrowing of reasonable thinking. "This form hypermarket can thus help us understand what is meant by the end of modernity. The large cities have witnessed the birth, in about a century (1850-1950), of a generation of large, modern stores, but this fundamental modernization did not overthrow the urban structure. [...] (with the hyper market) a new morphogenesis has appeared, which comes from the cybernetic kind (that is to say, reproducing at the level of the territory, of the home, of transit, the scenarios of molecular control that are those of the genetic code), and whose form is nuclear and satellite." (Baudrillard 1994: 77).

Baudrillard completes the analysis by introducing the subchapter on the 'Clone Story'. His approach is very clear; cloning has disastrous effects on society and the human being. Identical individuals are never a representation of the real; they represent a copy, a phantasm. The clone is realized by genetic means and constitutes the disappearance of any imaginary; it is the result of productive technology. He then classifies the simulacra into three types: simulacra that are natural, naturalist and that aim the restitution or the ideal institution of nature made in God's image; simulacra that aim at continuous globalization and expansion, and last the simulacra of simulation which is founded on the model, the cybernetic game, aiming for total control. After dividing them, the simulacra are attributed to a type of imaginary: "to the first category belongs the imaginary of the Utopia. To the second corresponds science fiction" and to the third "the implosive era of models. The models no longer constitute either transcendence or projection, they no longer constitute the imaginary in relation to the real, and they are themselves an anticipation of the real [...] The field opened is that of simulation in the cybernetic sense, that is, of the manipulation of these models at every level. [...] The imaginary was the alibi of the real, in a world dominated by the reality principle. Today, it is the real that has become the alibi of the model, in a world controlled by the principle of simulation." (Baudrillard 1994: 119).

Baudrillard's view is pessimistic; he anticipates that we have become simulators and that we are simulacra in a universe in which one has to fight without hope because all power, all axes of value, are liquefied. In this universe, Baudrillard can see no more hope for meaning.

The book "America", a perfect example of Baudrillard's understanding of postmodern society, opens up with the subchapter 'Vanishing Point'. The ideas presented in this book continue to build on the same structure that the previous ones built. The disappearing landscapes represent the motifs, which make possible Baudrillard's theme of hyper reality. The introduction to this book presents the esthetics of disappearance by insisting first on the vastness, emptiness of the desert and then, by turning toward the metropolitan areas of New York. The writer insists that he is in search of 'astral' America, not the social and cultural one: "the America of the empty, absolute freedom of the freeways, not the deep America of mores and mentalities, but the America of desert speed, of motels and mineral surfaces. [...] I sought the finished form of the future catastrophe of the social in geology, in that upturning of depth that can be seen in the striated spaces, the reliefs of salt and stone, the canyons where the fossil river flows down, the immemorial abyss of slowness that shows itself in erosion and geology." (Baudrillard 1986:5) Baudrillard's view insists on the fact that the silence of the desert is a visual thing, a product of the gaze that stares out and finds nothing to be reflected.

The concept of desert is expanded to the desert of meaninglessness as opposed to the profusion of sense. The desert is an expression of metamorphic forms, which Baudrillard sees as magical. His interest lies in the mineralized petrified forms of desert, the perfect geometry of forms and architecture, which hasn't been designed with a purpose. The mineralization of the desert is then compared with the extermination of meaning, drawing back on the ideas expressed in the previous books, i.e. the signs that fail to represent anything. The implosion of meaning is seen as the invention of the Americans. Baudrillard sees in the desert a perfect example of hyper reality, which has begun at the end of modernity. The next subchapter is dedicated to New York which represents an example of anti-architecture: "Anti-architecture, the true sort (not the kind you find in Arcosanti, Arizona, which gathers together all the soft technologies in the heart of the desert), the wild, inhuman type that is beyond the measure of man was made here- made itself here- in New York, without considerations of setting, well-being, or ideal ecology. It opted for hard technologies, exaggerated all dimensions, gambled on heaven and hell...Eco-architecture, eco-society... this is the gentle hell of the Roman Empire in its decline." (Baudrillard 1986:14).

Baudrillard continues by highlighting the differences, which exist between Europe and America. The latter seems to be eroded by wealth, power, indifference, technological futility making it both exciting and disenchanting. Baudrillard sees the disastrous effects on Europe that were created by the end of modernity in America. "Astral America" fights against the dreams, which it created itself, by materializing them. This is the difference between an American and a European mind. America is the land of the pragmatic dreams, everything one can dream of will become reality.

Thus America is neither dream nor reality. It is a hyper reality, construed as an utopia "which has behaved from the very beginning as though it were already achieved. Everything here is real and pragmatic, and yet is full of stuff of dreams too. It may be that the truth of America can only be seen by a European, since he alone will discover here the perfect simulacrum- that of the immanence and material transcription of all values." (Baudrillard 1986:24) The Americans have no sense of the simulation because they are simulation by being a part of the model. By being part of the hyper real model, they live on a continent, which is a giant hologram. The motif of the hologram is present again in Baudrillard and this is due to the fact that the hologram stresses the idea of the unreal substance, reviving the world of phantasy. It is the continent in which paradoxically specialized "institutes are set up to make people's bodies come together and touch, and at the same time, invents pans in which the water does not touch the bottom of the pan [...] this is called interface or interaction. It has replaced face-to-face contact and action." (Baudrillard 1986:28) In Baudrillard's view American culture is linked to the concept of the desert, those deserts which are not part of the nature by contrast with the town, in which human institutions are linked to the idea of the emptiness of the desert, not signifying anything. Artificiality is another component the desert is not foreign to. In Baudrillard's opinion the desert includes everything that is artificial, man-made. He gives as an example Furnace Creek as a synthetic oasis. At the same time, Baudrillard points to a desert, which is signaling the disappearance, the vanishing of humanity. The concept of Eternal Return introduced in the next pages points to the recurrence of micro processes, the unfolding of things in unnecessary ways. Baudrillard sees these symptoms as an end to modernity.

The hyper real is the result of the end of modernity. Baudrillard reminds us that, unlike Nietzsche who saw an end to the spiritual crises in the exaltation of a free will, the hyper reality follows a different pattern resulting in the recurrence of micro processes that are instantly forgotten. Baudrillard foresees an unbridgeable rift between America and Europe. In his view: "there isn't just a gap between us, but a whole chasm of modernity. You are born modern, you do not become so. And we have never become so. What strikes you immediately in Paris is that you are in the nineteenth century. Coming from Los Angeles, you land back in the 1800s." (Baudrillard 1986:68) He continues with the thought that for the European mind the events of 1789 have a lot of importance, them having shaped our minds and leading to a sort of historical predestination. The subchapter "Utopia achieved" highlights the fact that for the European mind America represents a utopia, a phantasy, the exile, a phantasy of immigration.

Baudrillard insists that America is the representation of modernity, it is the only country where modernity is original; and it lives a life of simulation: "In this sense, for us the whole of America is a desert. Culture exists there in a wild state: it sacrifices all intellect, all aesthetics in a process of literal transcription into the real. (Baudrillard 1986: 94). America seems to have lost all its power, of great ideas, converging into a model of the hyper real.

References

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